Introduction

The holiday season has come early for multinational corporations. This summer, World Trade Organization (WTO) representatives have been making a list and checking it twice, to get rid of laws that corporations don’t like. And this time, they want to take away our ability to buy safe and clearly labeled food. From laws limiting the levels of toxic chemicals in food, to restaurant sanitation regulations, to food labeling, a growing list of food safety and labeling laws could be challenged under WTO rules.

Back in 2002, the WTO asked countries to send wish lists of other countries’ laws, including food safety regulations, which make exporting goods more costly. Not surprisingly, countries listed hundreds of laws their exporters didn’t like. South Korea, for example, didn’t want to have to test all of their shipments of clams and oysters for “poison.” ¹

As of July 2006, negotiations to expand the current set of international trade laws are stalled. The new rules would go even further to tie the hands of federal, state and local lawmakers, and give authority to “trade experts” in Geneva to decide what our legislators can and cannot do to protect our food supply.